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Gatwick’s Chatbot Just the Latest in Aviation Bots

Gatwick Airport joins the growing
number of aviation businesses making use of chatbots to help guide
their huge numbers of customers around those sprawling hallways and
to the right gate on time, with a refreshing display of commitment
and business smarts.

Last year, London’s second busiest
runway at Gatwick Airport was thrown into chaos by unsubstantiated
drone sightings, cancelling flights, with armed police swarming the
perimeter and chaos in the terminals. After much hunting, there
probably was no drone, but it highlights the problem and potential
for drone misuse around any airport.

A year later and Gatwick Airport has a
drone of its own, a new chatbot called Gail
on Facebook Messenger to interact with passengers and
visitors. Gail can provide the usual flight information, a range of
flight specific notifications like delays and gate changes, plus
information about the airport shops, restaurants and other
facilities.

Ask her for a burger and she’ll list
suitable restaurants, searches for vegan options or all-day
breakfasts seem to be rather vague, but there’s plenty of time for
her to learn. More importantly, flight information pops up quickly
and she can search by light number, time of expected arrival of
general terms like “BA to New York”.

Gail is currently limited to handling
passenger queries in English for now, but the airport expects other
languages to be added next year. Perhaps the best news from the
launch is that Gail has her own page on the airport’s
contacts list, giving her some prominence and not
leaving her buried in a press release that no one will see.

Gatwick also plans to push Gail to other chat platforms including WhatsApp and Apple Business Messenger. All of which sounds like a solid plan for progress and not the usual, let’s wait and see how she does approach.

As part of Gatwick’s £1 billion-plus
investment in new technology and infrastructure, AI-enabled Gail is
based on experience from Lyon-Saint Exupéry airport’s chatbot that
has been running since 2017, another impressive effort in not
reinventing the wheel, with many chatbots now in operation, there is
rarely a need to start from scratch.

This collaboration helped Gatwick
define what the chatbot could be used for, questions passengers might
ask and the value of features such as ‘quick response’. From that
experience and information, Gatwick also provided some useful lessons
gathered so far, that include:

“Quality of conversations –
currently, the Gatwick chatbot understands and answers about 80% of
the questions it receives and within a year the chatbots of both
Lyon-Saint Exupéry and Gatwick are expected to reach a new level of
understanding, reaching around 95% by actively learning from
interactions with users.

Customer experience – the Gatwick
chatbot takes the experience further by integrating restaurants so
that passengers looking for somewhere to eat before their flight can
use the chatbot to help them find a suitable restaurant. For example
– by asking “Which restaurants have vegetarian options?”
users will be presented with a list of options. Other chatbots in
VINCI Airports’ network are likely to benefit from lessons that .

Multi-channel access – while both the
Gatwick and Lyon-Saint Exupéry’s chatbots are available on
Facebook Messenger, the Gatwick chatbot will be tested on platforms
such as WhatsApp and Apple Business Messenger, while Lyon has focused
on web and mobile channels – an approach that will develop further
knowledge and best-practice sharing.”

Chatbots and Other
Technology in the Air

Most airlines like KLM and recently
Lufthansa, and a growing number of airports now
operate bots, to speed up customer service and deliver key
information. But businesses of any size and in any market are seeing
the clear benefits of bots as customer acceptance and usage rises.

Technology is playing an increasingly
important role in air travel, with British
Airways testing VR as an in-flight entertainment
option. Plane builders looking to use large
digital screens rather than tiny porthole windows to
make the experience more comfortable (unless you’re scared of
flying).

Other innovations can be seen around
the world with Miami
Dade’s airport using an app and Bluetooth beacon
technology to provide a personal travel assistant and hyper accurate
location services.

But chatbots are the key point of an
airline’s or airport’s contact with the customer, from searching
and booking flights, to handling the airport experience and offering
customer and after care. That can include satisfaction surveys,
suggestions for new features and as chatbots become fully-fledged
personal assistants, so much more within apps, kiosks and other
services.

Any business in any market can build
their own chatbots, using services like SnatchBot for a multi-channel approach to getting in touch and helping their
customers.

Chris Knight writes about where technology will take us next, from the power of neural networks, artificial intelligence and chatbots, to the endless worlds promised by augmented and virtual reality. From the latest in gadgets and hardware to how digital businesses can use technology to grow, Chris makes the future clear and understandable to all.

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Chris Knight writes about where technology will take us next, from the power of neural networks, artificial intelligence and chatbots, to the endless worlds promised by augmented and virtual reality. From the latest in gadgets and hardware to how digital businesses can use technology to grow, Chris makes the future clear and understandable to all.

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